A little while ago, I gave a speech at NYU Stern Business School on “How to Squeeze Maximum Value from Business School: Leverage Your Education to Accelerate Your Career”. How can you maximize the benefits of all the years and all the money that you invested in your business education?

I prepared the Powerpoint for my personal reference, for my friends starting school, and for any of my future children who may go to business school. My main focus is business students, but the principles I discuss are relevant regardless of the exact subject you are studying.

To prepare this paper I interviewed many of my MBA classmates on what were the most effective uses of their time during school. I also probed to learn about what were the least effective uses of their time.

I thought that you might find the slides, below, of interest.

Yesterday the NY Tech Meetup elected Innonate (Nate Westheimer) to be its new organizer.  There is no doubt that the NY region is lucky to have Nate offer to contribute so much of his time to our collective cause.  As many know he has been an active part of our community both as an entrepreneur and a contributor to both one of the City's most prominent incubation spaces and to our national political process. 

While none of us can affect change in isolation, I am optimistic that Nate's fresh ideas will inspire many in our community to contribute more than they already do.  I suspect that he will not have to look far for any help that he needs - many of us are be ready to support him along the way.

I also wanted to highlight how important it was to see so many people express a willingness to give their time to take a leadership role in this group. The people who came forward are truly very special. 

Many of us play roles in the venture ecosystem that are part of a bigger machine, one that drives toward a better standard of living, a cleaner earth and the creation of more transparent information.  Whether entrepreneur, employee or financier we play a role in creating a better legacy; we move society forward.  Most of us, however, do so with aligned incentives; we get to do well by doing good. 

Many of the people who ran to be the organizer organizer of the NY Tech Meetup transcend that standard; they invest their time without a clear path to personal financial reward.  What is most inspiring is that the people on this list (and many others in our community) are motivated by the pursuit of greater ideals:  the vision of making this little patch of the world a better society where creativity is supported, passions can be pursued and new jobs can be created almost as quickly as new ideas.  These people are the lifeblood or our community and the fact that so many ran for this position reminded me of how many people in our region are willing to give more than they take. 

In sum, I suppose that I have two messages here: 

First, thank you to everyone who offered to help lead.  Stay involved, drive forward, you will continue to make a difference. 

Second, to Nate - go get 'em.

Last night, I “won” (results) Organizer responsibilities of the NY Tech Meetup, taking the reins from Scott Heiferman and Dawn Barber in running the monthly Meetup of 7,500 members.

The election for the role was about doing more than just meeting once a month and was about building, in Scott’s words, a real “21st Century organization.”

My platform was different from the other candidates in that it was a plan for the entire ecosystem of NY tech organizations and community organizers — not just the NYTM. In fact, I was pretty open about the fact my plan could happen with our without the NYTM; nonetheless, when asked to take that plan to the NYTM election, I became confident that we, as a NYTM community, can rally to get the good work done that needs to be done on behalf of all.

So what needs to be done? Here are the next steps, in my mind. Comment below if you have any others to add:

1. Transition. I’m meeting with Scott and Dawn first thing next week to get caught up to speed on the organization’s books, logistics for next month’s Meetup, and how to proceed forming an advisory board.
2. Advisory Board formation. Working with Dawn and Scott, these positions should be settled before the January 6th Meetup.
3. January 6th Meetup! I want this one to be great! Get ready to see some super cool technology and for a super cool guest MC.
4. At the Meetup, I’ll announce the formation of the Organizer Board. This is where I see the hard work getting done and the community truly benefiting. Are you ready for it? If you saw my pitch, you get the idea of what this means, but essentially I’m calling on self-identified community organizers to step up to the plate and be the inward and outward evangelist of their niche and the NY tech community at large. More details to come.
5. Work with the Advisory Board on basic format changes for the Meetup, securing financial well being of the organization, and confirming the Organizer Board.
6. Finalize Organizer Board and start working together on behalf of the broader NY tech community!
7. Work with Organizer Board, with guidance from Advisory Board, to determine metrics of organizing success and technology to help us organize better!
8. Organize!
9. Organize!
10. Organize!

Of course there’s more here, but you get the idea: Your Meetup is going to remain mostly the same with a few enhancements, while, in the background, folks are given a platform to amplify their community organizing effort through coordination and collaboration with the the other great work that’s going on out there.

As a result of these new responsibilities, I’m also pleased to announce that David S. Rose and Rose Tech Ventures have extended my position as Entrepreneur in Residence through Q1′09. This will allow me to dedicate a very large portion of my time to achieving these goals set for the New York Tech Meetup, and to front load my term with the resources needed to build the organizational infrastructure my plan requires.

Finally, there are a billion people to thank. While I won’t manage to thank everyone that deserves it on this blog, I must recognize Charlie O’Donnell for first calling for me to do this; David S. Rose for his ongoing support of the NY tech community; my nextNY community for introducing me on the wonderful world of NY tech; my roommate Michael Galpert for the awesome Shepard Fairey-esk campaign logo you see above (which was created in Aviary, I must add); Girls in Tech, the Web 2.0 Expo team, and GroundReport.com for their endorsements; the list goes on but I’m late to an interview!

And, most importantly, thank you to Scott and Dawn for building this great organization and getting us this far. You two are the reason this amazing opportunity exists.

Now it’s time to get to work.

NYConvergence ORIGINALNate Westheimer, currently the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at RoseTech Ventures, was declared the winner of the election for NY Tech Meetup organizer in an e-mail distributed to meetup members at 12:03 AM this morning by co-organizer Dawn Barber. Barber's e-mail also...

Here's the latest news from a variety of NY-based startups. If you are a NY-based startup and have news about your company, send it in.

KickApps

KickApps announced today that they have hired David Lapter as Chief Financial Officer and Tom Gaffney to head up the company’s expanding Customer Success division. Apparently the Customer Success division works on strategy and creative services.I've never heard of a Customer Success division but I like the idea! Check out all of our KickApps coverage.

Outbrain

Outbrain launched an update to their widget this week called the "Link Zapper". We run the Outbrain recommendations widget on CN (you can see it at the end of this post). The widget recommends other posts both from CN and from our whitelist of partner sites. The Link Zapper allows us to easily remove a link that might not be a good fit for the source story. It's a very manual process and while I am hoping for some automated tools in the future, it's a good start. Check out all of our Outbrain coverage.

ZocDoc

We've covered ZocDoc extensively on CN and I believe it could be the breakout star of 2009. ZocDoc provides online management for doctor, dentist and other healthcare practitioners. Forbes magazine named ZocDoc the winner of their small business contest. The announcement came this week and ZocDoc won $100,000 to further develop and expand their service.

Magnify.net

Earlier this week Magnify.net announced the launch of Thwoop.com, an online community for featured entertainment content and user-contributed videos. The concept for Thwoop.com came from children’s toy e-tailer Brand Performance and the site will be powered by Magnify.net. Check out all of our Magnify.net coverage.

NYConvergence ORIGINALPRNewser held its first holiday party last night at the Heartland Brewery located at the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan last night. In spite of the midtown location, the party drew a large crowd to the restaurant's downstairs...

NYConvergence ORIGINALThe polls have officially opened in the race for the next organizer of the NY Tech Meetup. Assistant organizer Dawn Barber sent out an e-mail to members last night to let them know that the poll is open until...

Peter Kafka at MediaMemo is reporting that NY-based Tumblr has received a Series B round of funding in the amount of $4.5 million. The round was led by previous investors Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. Kafka says this puts the company's valuation at $15 million and that the investors are looking for at least a $50 million exit.

When Tumblr raised their first round of venture capital ($750k) last year, the company shared a figure of 75,000 users and that they reached traffic levels in 2 months that it took Digg 8 months to reach. Kafka also spoke with CEO David Karp who noted that they will be working towards launching a freemium model early next year. The freemium model means that you get some features for free and others you pay a small fee for.

This past June, CEO David Karp provided a business update about Tumblr which I caught on video (embedded below). At that point, David noted that Tumblr has 310,000 users (no word on active), 120,000 posts per day and they host 15,000 custom domains.

If you are new to Tumblr or want to learn about the company and their model, check out this video from June with Karp.

This post is follow-up to my post “Power Alley,” and is in regards to my candidacy for New York Tech Meetup Organizer and what can be done to advance the NY tech community.

With the New York Tech Meetup, I propose creating a board of egoless community organizers, each dedicated to evangelizing and coodinating on behalf of a self-identifed constituency of the broader NY tech community.

I’d call on people like Whitney Hess to be the inward and outward evangelist of the design, UI & UX communities; I’d call on folks like Charlie O’Donnell to be the inward and outward evangelist of the University communities; I’d call on folks like Howard Greenstein to be the inward and outward evangelist of the NGO community; and, most importantly, I’d call on you to step up and become the inward and outward evangelist of whichever community you see fit, working with other community organizers to advance the New York tech community by facilitating coordination and collaboration among the Alley’s dozens of amazing and already existing tech organizations and communities.

This is why:

After I posted about the importance of coordination within the grid of existing organizations and constituencies in an ecosystem, my dad replied with this note:

I do like your notion of comparing a coordinator role to a power grid.

The power grid makes connections in smart seamless ways. In a human network, with a good “coordinator” (like in an efficient power grid), power sources and power consumers can quickly and seamlessly switch roles.

…

Also, the grid acts like a battery. One of the big obstacles to alternative, super-local power generation has been storage. Battery technology is way behind generation technology.

Enter the grid. While the grid does employ some storage technologies (using pumped water, etc.), most often excess capacity is exchanged for surge demand and the whole thing works out. It does rely on some super mega gimungus generators that can respond to demand. But it allows for smaller generators to simple supply when they can.

Wow.

While his entire note got me thinking, one notion particular has had my mind spinning over the last few days: The idea that “power sources and power consumers can quickly and seamlessly switch roles.”

Allowing roles to be flexible is the stuff of strong communities and the focus of good community organizers. When the agenda of an organization is solely on getting work done — rather than building personal or institutional legacy, which is only a byproduct, not a facilitator of getting work done — then building flexible communities makes as much sense as building flexible power grids, because you care less about who’s who, and more about what’s getting done.

But so flexible that roles among power generators and power consumers — leaders and followers — can be reversed?! “Heresy!”

No, not heresy. This is exactly how we should run our organizations.

This is how I’ll run the New York Tech Meetup.

(For more information, and to endorse me, please see my Platform page.)

A new campaign site — designed by the same team that brought the change mantra to computer screens across the country — comes with a buzz word that some hesitated to link with Comptroller William Thompson Jr.

Mayor.

In an attempt to do away with the doubt and skepticism surrounding his mayoral bid, Thompson launched his campaign site today — a tad early by some standards — and chatted with some online media this afternoon.

“I’m somebody who understands the people of New York,” Thompson said during a conference call. “I’m uniquely qualified to be the mayor of the city of New York… This is a race to help determine the future of New York City.”

The site is sans issues so far (it mostly covers what he has done, not where he wants to take the city), but Thompson said he would eventually be rolling out policy briefs as the campaign pushes forward.

What issues should you look for?

The budget, for one, he said, followed by education and housing.

When asked by one reporter what his odds were of defeating Mayor Michael Bloomberg — whose approval rating has dipped but is still in the high 50s — Thompson said: “I have a good chance at being elected mayor.”